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Rationale: At the start of 2021, several SARS-CoV-2 cluster outbreaks in schools threatened in-person education and created a fairly chaotic and frightening environment for school personnel. To keep the schools open while preventing COVID-19 outbreaks, intensive diagnostic testing in teachers and school personnel was strongly recommended but missing at the time., Objectives: A project was launched in Belgian schools to weekly analyze the morning saliva of school personnel using PCR-testing to detect and prevent COVID-19 positive cases. In this quasi-experimental study, we aimed to examine whether the implementation of this saliva testing project impacted school personnel's pandemic-related health concerns, well-being, and adherence to the health-protective measures, contrasting experimental with control schools., Methods: The data were collected during the third wave (Alpha-wave, February-March 2021) of the pandemic. The sample consisted of 435 participants from 34 different schools across Flanders (Belgium) (78.8% female; M age = 43.87 years, range = 21-67) of which 82% participated in the weekly saliva tests (i.e., experimental group) and 18% took part in the control group., Results: Results from a series of linear mixed regression models showed that saliva testing buffered against an increase in health concerns among tested school personnel but did not affect participants' general well-being. Slight declines in adherence to the health-protective behaviors were observed, yet this was only the case for participants who felt less supported by their school principal. High degrees of principals' support also fostered the sharpest decreases in school staff's pandemic-related health concerns., Conclusions: When keeping the schools open in unstable pandemic times, weekly saliva testing is a promising strategy to prevent cluster outbreaks while simultaneously safeguarding health concerns among school personnel. School principals appear to play a critical role in the implementation of saliva testing to secure positive effects., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Rationale: Vaccination willingness is a critical step in the effort to reach herd immunity and control the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, many people remain reluctant to be vaccinated., Objective: Integrating the literature on Self-Determination Theory, trust in authorities, and conspiracy theories, this research examines (a) the direct and indirect effect of government trust and conspiracism via underlying forms of motivations for (not) getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and (b) whether these associations differ across the two largely politically independent Belgian linguistic groups., Methods: Using Structural Equation Modeling, we tested our models in two independent samples, in February 2021 (T1) and April 2021 (T2) (Total N = 8264)., Results: At T1 and T2, Government trust and conspiracism both predict COVID-19 vaccination intention, respectively positively and negatively. These relations are fully mediated by motivational factors, with identified motivations having a larger positive contribution. Looking at linguistic context, differences emerge at T2, with French-speaking Belgians showing lower levels of government trust and higher levels of conspiracism than Dutch speakers., Conclusions: Results highlight the importance of integrating distal (trust in government, conspiracism) and proximal (motivational) variables to understand vaccination intentions., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)